Even with my worse fears about the upgrade, after running it by the test server. Then taking note of the changes so I could quickly make the same changes on the live server, all in all about an hour or so for the upgrade. I guess I'll have to go back and take some time to diff the forum.css’s to see what has changed from my version to the latest version.

That's not so bad, right. No surprises this time anyway.

I should add here, that it's worth the time. I can just be a little quick to complain near the end of my day.

Thanks for the extra effort on this release Ilia. It looks great!

note: I did change the font size back to the old default. It just looks better that way.

We have no idea what size the font is in the form you filled in. The size of a font depends on things such as screen resolution and user browser settings. The fonts were changed from 'px' to 'pt' for this reason. There is still work being done on them, though.

Discussing font size is pretty trivial. I'll take a screenshot here so you can see what I see. Font size is relative regardless, and the size on the forum now is far different than it has been in the past. I'm glad to hear that you're still working on it.

It looks the same if I'm at work on a 1600x1200 monitor or here at home on the laptop with the wide screen high res 1680x1050. Also it doesn't seem to matter if I'm using IE or Firefox, I suppose that's the good news.

Okay, the font size is overly large. Change your font settings. Look at yours compared to mine. My font settings are clearly different from yours. That was the whole reasoning behind changing them from 'px' to 'pt' in the stylesheet -- to honor the user's settings. When they are specified as pixels, most browsers tend to ignore the user's font settings (unless they are strictly enforced). Check out this thread for more information on the subject -- http://fudforum.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=6493&unread=1&.

I did start on a new template today that is intended to further address the font issue. Whether or not I finish it, and then whether or not it would be integrated into the official code base, I don't know. Sadly, the templating system for FUDforum is a bit of a headache. I made some good progress on the index page today, but there is a lot more than just that one page.

But, no. The fonts don't look like they have with FUDforum for a long time. There was no way to avoid that and make them work better for more people without a substantial rewrite to (at least) the CSS. Personally, I think it involves a lot of work to the markup as well.

I think when you want a site to have a uniform appearance and the code to dictate the font and layout, then I tend to think that allowing the persons browser to make any adjustment at all is a mistake. Maybe that's old school.

I've kept up on reading most subjects on FUD here, and I was reading the thread you mention here as it progressed. I had thoughts on the matter, but consider myself self proclaimed expert and in no way globally accepted expert in style sheets.

We all know that the behavior between different browser clients is the real debate. I try to strike a balance between them all with keeping IE last on my list for compatibilities. Possibly the only true way to be universal is to detect each browser type and direct them to the appropriate style sheet, and in some cases no style sheet at all for that matter.

My browser client is default from the install. I haven't changed any font settings at all. I don't intend to.

I really like the ctrl+"+" or "-" to grow and shrink fonts on a page. It works for me.

When you say "I think when you want a site to have a uniform appearance and the code to dictate the font and layout, then I tend to think that allowing the persons browser to make any adjustment at all is a mistake," that isn't "old school." It is proposing a broken internet. "Old school" is markup with "<p></p>" denoting a paragraph, "<img>" denoting an illustration, and "<table></table>" displaying tabular data (think spreadsheet). The internet is meant to distribute information. HTML was devised to make disseminating that information easy and standard. Everyone who has a client that can understand the markup is able to access the information. When the internet became popular outside of academia, people started exploiting parts of the markup to make documents look the way the writer wanted them to look no matter how they were viewed (the browser developers certainly aided in this). The problem is, that is fundamentally flawed.

As is clear in this instance, what you see may not be what I see. CSS (cascading stylesheets) were devised to fix this problem. It is meant to get markup back to being markup so that any device, be it a mobile phone or a toaster, can process the markup and display it as is warranted for the device. Meanwhile, the CSS can suggest to the client how that markup should be displayed. Ultimately it is up to the user, or device, viewing the document that decides how it will be presented. That isn't a mistake. That is the way the world wide web was originally designed.

There are plenty of other reasons for using semantically relevant markup and CSS. I won't go into them, but you can certainly read more on the subject if you wish.

As for making your site use the same fonts across your forum and non-forum content. The easiest way for you to do that would be to load a stylesheet after the forums that overrides the fonts it specifies. That is where the "cascading" part of CSS comes in. Rules are read from top to bottom and applied in that order. So, if you create a stylesheet named "override.css", you can load it up after the forums by editing "header.tmpl" in the template editor and putting '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="some/web/root/override.css">' after the link element that loads the forum CSS file.

And yes, I change the font settings on my browser. I have a set of specific fonts, and sizes, that are easiest for me to read.

I think you’re failing to make some finite distinctions, a couple of them being the difference between a graphical site and a data site. I would consider the FUD forum to be data site where information is stored and then browsed in a logical manner, most notably in table like formatting. Data either numerical or text is best displayed in a format that helps organize and add logic to what might otherwise be a chaotic display without.

It’s a huge undertaking to organize the data structure so that any device capable of retrieving the data can read it and also display it with its own best settings. I’ve found with my limited knowledge, that it’s a struggle at the very least to even get the most notable devices or clients to display the data without errors at all. Error being defined as “anything that the common user wouldn’t expect to see”.

I am old school. I’ll read up on the link you provide to see if I can incorporate some new technology into my current code. It seems like I do a rewrite and just as I seem to perfect a layout, as the rest of us debug and share our new ways, it’s time for another rewrite.

In the end, I want code to be uniform enough so if I want to integrate some code into something I’m working on, then it can be done without “breaking the camels back”, so to speak.

So, when someone comes to a site that I’ve built, do I want them to know that I’m using FUD?. Sure I do. But do I want it to look like a FUD clone? Uhm, nope.

Every project I’ve been involved in, when it comes to templating, seems to eventually make its way to one of the known templating systems. When I say involved, I mean in a somewhat passive way, not as a major contributor.

Actually, there is zero data on this forum that requires a table. Like I said, a table is meant to display data like would be found in a spreadsheet. Take for example the messages in this thread. Each message is clearly a distinct division of content within the document. Therefore, each message could be contained within a div. The data associated with the poster is really a list of information, so put that information in a list, etcetera.

Using relevant markup correctly actually gives you, the designer, more flexibility in design while also giving the user more flexibility in the way they choose to read it. Take a look at the CSS Zen Garden. Every "theme" there uses the exact same markup, but none look alike. Yet, if you visit the site with a text browser like lynx, it is very easy to read and navigate.

Oh, I have to say that you haven’t convinced me that your method or the method you intend to use here is sane or otherwise the better choice. As always, a step forward and improving speed is always a good thing, but at what cost is the actual question. Right now FUD is very usable for me, in my small world and existence. Are you designing for a larger purpose or customer? What does the future hold?

Still looks like romper room in here with default Firefox browser settings and I believe that when I used IE to see if it was just my browser giving it that look, the default IE setting had the same effect (please don’t make me use IE again to test it). Didn’t we all learn in the beginning to test everything with default settings before going live?